Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Alice In Wonderland. This is purely for fun.

Chapter 1

"If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't."

- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Harry Potter is running for his life.

He tears through the woods, his chest a raw mess of burning lungs and pounding terror and pain. His legs scream with each pump of his muscles, his scar burns with each panicked breath he sucks in, but he can't stop, he musn't stop, not for a moment -

You cannot escape, Harry.

He will, he must, he has no choice -

Behind him, the pursuing Death Eaters fling curses, and Bellatrix' s psychotic laugh rings in his ears. Rage burns white-hot at the forefront of his mind, and the urge to twist around and hurt her is nearly overwhelming, but Harry doesn't have his wand, they've taken it, the murdering bastards, they've taken everything.

Oh no, Harry, Voldemort whispers, his voice a soft hiss in the depths of Harry's mind. Not everything. Not yet.

Harry grits his teeth and desperately tries to push the voice from his mind. Behind him, Hogwarts is burning, and somewhere in it's ancient halls his friends lay...his friends are...

No, Harry thinks. Because it hasn't quite hit him yet, the crumbling of his world. He knows that when it does, when it registers just how horribly wrong things have gone, his knees will buckle underneath him; his chest will give out, and his mind will shatter, and Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived - the last hope of the wizarding world - will be broken. They will drag him, unresisting, to the Dark Lord, and he will die, and everything the Light has worked for, everything they've sacrificed, will be for nothing.

The thought is unbearable.

So Harry runs. He weaves through the ancient trees, deeper and deeper into the Forbidden Forest, while the Death Eaters chase him for their own amusement and Voldemort whispers in his mind. Eventually the trees grow thicker and closer in space, the tops of them disappearing into the canopy above his head. They block out what little light the stormy sky has to offer, and now Harry's muscles have progressed past the point of exhaustion and settled well into near-collapse. The chase has turned into a game of hide and seek, and it is only a matter of time before he loses...

Sure enough, a hand closes on the back of his shirt, and Harry is suddenly face to face with Bellatrix Lestrange. She grins madly at him, yanking him out of the shadow of the tree he'd been hiding behind into view of the other Death Eaters. They laugh and jeer and howl their victory as his legs give out beneath him and he sinks, silent, to the ground. Harry looks each of them in the eyes, his own shining with hatred. His body trembles with exhaustion and the strength of his rage, and the Death Eaters mistake this for fear.

"Oh," Bellatrix breathes, her dark head tilted. "Is little baby Potter scared?"

The others laugh sparsely. It's clear the chase has tired them out. Harry merely looks up at her, breathing hard.

Dumbledore once told him that love is the greatest magic. But Harry's love, the great fire that gave him strength and courage and hope, hope that everything would turn out okay in the end, has flickered and fizzled and died. It lies shriveled now with the cold bodies of Ron and Hermione, somewhere in Hogwarts; in its place roars hate.

It fills his heart, flows within him as thickly as the blood in his veins, and as Bellatrix's cold hand - the one that killed Sirius, and Molly Weasley and Ron - tightens painfully around his arm, Harry is nearly consumed. It is only his weakened limbs that keep him from lunging at the madwoman, from ripping and tearing and hurting her, like a rabid animal, like a savage -

But she's hurt him so badly. After all the loved ones he's lost at her hands, does he not deserve a little retribution?

As it is, Harry's muscles have given out, and so he can do nothing but try not to break down as the Death Eaters congratulate themselves, as his scar burns with the force of Voldemort' s triumph.

Did I not tell you, child? The Dark Lord whispers, exhilarated, amongst the turmoil of his thoughts. This is the day of my victory, Harry Potter. This is the day you lose everything.

Bellatrix is gloating now, too. She's forcing Harry up by his arm, clearly with the intent to Disapparate, and the last shreds of Harry's composure are starting to tear -

"Avada Kedavra!" A voice whispers.

There is a familiar flash of green light, and Harry tenses, sure the curse is aimed at him, that one of the Death Eaters has grown impatient or stupid or suicidally bold and decided to just kill him.

But then Bellatrix hisses in fury, and Harry follows her eyes just in time to see a Death Eater drop dead to the forest floor.

What?

There is another whisper, another flash of green, and a second Death Eater crumples to the ground. Chaos erupts; Bellatrix flings Harry to the ground, her face twisted in an ugly snarl as she searches for the killer amongst the unsettled group of servants, who are turning on each other with their wands raised, faces drawn and pale with fear.

The madwoman screams at them to be silent, and as they obey, she steps cautiously back towards Harry, who lies helplessly on the ground. Bellatrix' s black eyes dart between the corpses and their shadowed surroundings. Into the quiet, she calls,

"Who's there?"

A harsh whisper pierces the silence yet again, and Bellatrix narrowly avoids the Killing Curse, her expression contorted in shock and fury. She barely has time to regain her footing before she is dodging another curse, and another, and now there are shouts of confusion as the Death Eaters fling spells at nothing, hoping to catch their invisible foe.

"Agh!" Bellatrix screams at last, her head whipping from side to side as she marches to an astonished Harry.

"It doesn't matter!" she shouts, reaching for his arm. "Leave the coward, whoever he is! We have the boy -"

Someone moves up beside Harry, then, though he sees no one, and as Bellatrix prepares again to Disapparate, the person shifts.

"Crucio," they murmur, and Bellatrix goes rigid, before releasing his arm and falling onto her back, her body spasming in agony. Harry watches as her painted mouth stretches wide in a silent scream, her crazed eyes very large. Writhing and clawing at the ground, the madwoman makes a terrible image.

Through the shock, Harry registers a satisfaction deep within him at the sight, and it scares him, the strength of the feeling...

For a short while, the world becomes a vague, disinteresting blur. Harry stares at Bellatrix, his lungs still struggling to take in air, and he is dimly aware of a lapse in the strength of Voldemort's triumph as this mysterious stranger sweeps through the group of Death Eaters. They all go down as easily as children before him, these men that felled so many of his friends, and Harry sees, as the last servant pleads for mercy and is granted none, that this is no one he knows.

This person kills without hesitation, without mercy. They murder with a smooth casualness that reminds Harry vividly of Lord Voldemort - as if they've just performed a particularly irritating chore, rather than ended the lives of several human beings.

It bothers Harry, but he cannot find within himself an ounce of pity for them. He only wishes their deaths had been slower...

Disturbed again by the course of his thoughts, Harry drags himself back towards the nearest tree, mute and tense as the air shimmers unnaturally before him. Invisibility cloak, he thinks dimly, just as the stranger casts it off, and something odd crawls up his throat at the sight of it pooled at the stranger's feet.

It's his.

And as Harry's heart thunders, his mind clears. His brain is currently racing through a million theories as to how the stranger could have possibly discovered it, hidden away in the Room of Requirement - their last stronghold - under lock and key and spell. Voldemort, upon mastering the Elder Wand, had decided he wanted the other two Hallows, too, and so they had each taken turns enchanting the cloak' s hiding place so that only Harry could access it...

His thoughts are pulled to the ring. Harry, at his friends' urging, had hurled it into the sea some months after the siege of Hogwarts. Sneaking out of the castle and doing so had nearly cost them their lives, and he still remembers vividly the agony that had erupted in his scar once The Dark Lord learned of his actions. His elation at having stopped Voldemort from becoming the Master of Death was short-lived; Luna, Neville, and several others had perished in the face of Voldemort's fury, and since their deaths, things have gone considerably downhill.

Voldemort's forces outnumber them five to one, and Harry still has not found the seventh horcrux. He has no idea what it could possibly be; Snape had tried to tell him, before he'd died - tried to show him something - but the venom had killed him before he could explain anything, a fact that has deeply frustrated Harry for nearly a year, now.

But he supposes none of that matters, anymore.

Voldemort has won. The Light's last haven, the Room of Requirement, has finally failed them. They hadn't been expecting it; Harry had been curled up with Ginny while Ron and several others went over raid plans and Seamus McFinnigan talked quietly with Dean Thomas. Ginny had been speaking softly about something he no longer remembers, her fingers carding tenderly through his hair, when Hermione sat up, the book of curses she'd been reading falling from her lap.

And Harry will never forget the look on her face, her confused expression twisting into one of stunned realization, then white-faced terror as she sprung from the couch she'd been sitting on. Her voice was small and shaking with a hysteria that Harry had never heard before, but it immediately chilled his blood.

"Ron."

And Ron had turned to her, just as Harry's head shot up and the far wall opposite them exploded, dust and debris and panic preceding the triumphant Death Eaters who had marched in, wands raised, clearing the way for their lord.

Everything after that is a mess of murder and adrenaline and terror that Harry is unable to handle deciphering, right now. His closes his eyes against the image of his friends fighting for their lives - his friends are...

"Run, Harry!" Hermione had screamed at him, over and over in midst of the chaos. He's never seen her so...hysterical, so completely undone, her face tomato red and scrunched up and dripping tears as she shrieked at him like a banshee.

Just a few moments ago, a flash of green had struck Ron, and he'd fallen to the terrible sound of Bellatrix's laughter. Harry had been frozen at the sight, the rage that threatened to overtake him simmering down to a strange numbness that Hermione had struggled to break, shoving and punching his arms, screaming run, run, run, like a madwoman, trying to get him to the newly summoned exit.

He'd woken slowly, tried to take - then force - her with him, but Hermione had broken free from his hold and stumbled back towards Ron, her eyes red and wide.

"Run, Harry," she'd whispered, begged, just as the Death Eaters parted neatly and the Dark Lord stalked, triumphant, towards them, amongst the sea of dead.

And Harry turned without a word and ran - like a coward - just as Hermione spun on her heel and raised her wand. He'd heard Voldemort snarl and his best friend scream a spell, before bolting out into the castle, hating himself with a fierceness that almost stopped him from fleeing. The Death Eaters had quickly given chase.

He doesn't know what happened to Ginny, and as he looks up at his savior, Harry supposes he will never find out.

"Voldemort," he rasps, struggling to sit up, and maybe stand. He wants to at least die on his feet. He wants to at least go like a Gryffindor.

Not that I deserve to.

The young man continues to stare at him, seemingly transfixed.

Managing to get up on his knees, Harry looks back, his chin raised in defiance as he wonders silently how Voldemort pulled off this newest trick. A glamor? he ponders, a thrill of surprise running through him as he takes in the Dark Lord's new appearance. Gone are the serpentine features, the pallid skin and bloody eyes.

Instead, Tom Riddle stands before him, the spitting image of the boy from the diary. His face is thinner, however, his cheekbones more defined and his hair slightly longer as it curls around his ears in that familiar part. He's Tom Riddle, handsome and haughty...but older.

A very powerful glamor, Harry concludes, his heart rate speeding up. But why? For what purpose?

Then he looks into Voldemort' eyes.

They are...strange. And bright as they look on him, as though he is only thing in the world - the only thing that matters. Voldemort looks at him like that, when they're on the battlefield and their wands are raised...but the Dark Lord's eyes don't shine. Yet the boy before Harry is staring at him like Harry's father gazed at his mother in the old photographs, and it is discomfiting - shocking - enough that Harry drops his eyes, his brows furrowed.

"Harry."

He hears a trace of Tom Riddle's silken tone, hardly audible behind the hoarse whisper that is again unnervingly human. Suddenly, Harry is confused, an emotion he has no patience for in the face of such exhaustion, and without looking up he blurts,

"Just do it."

There is a pause.

"What?" Voldemort asks, with what sounds like genuine shock.

"Kill me," he says wearily, looking up into Tom Riddle's wide gray eyes, then down to the yew wand held loosely in his long fingers. When their gazes lock again, Harry whispers, "Go ahead. But this isn't the end, Tom. There'll be others. You haven't won yet."

He uses Voldemort's given name just to irritate the other before he's killed, but instead Voldemort shivers at the word, as though overcome by something Harry doesn't understand.

"Oh, Harry," he breathes, and now he's advancing, instead of raising his wand like Harry expects him to. "You really think I would..."

Then he's kicking the unconscious Bellatrix aside with a casualness that reminds Harry of who he is, and - and kneeling before him...

Harry blinks, dazed by the proximity of Lord Voldemort' s face to his own, by the fact that the most arrogant being to ever walk the earth has just allowed his knees to touch it. His world is suddenly narrowed down to gleaming gray eyes; they shine, but with something other than what filled James Potter's eyes when he looked at his wife. No...there is...a fragility there, reminiscent of the madness that lives in Bellatrix Lestrange' s eyes, accompanied by a hunger Harry finds he does not want comprehend.

"Voldemort?" he finds himself asking hesitantly, his nails digging into the cool soil beneath him.

The lips so close to his curl in a strange smile.

"Tom," the man corrects. And then Harry notices it: the small, shining contraption dangling from Tom Riddle's neck.

A Time-Turner.

Harry locks eyes with the young Voldemort. Oh my God.

It is suddenly hard to breathe. His mind floods through a thousand reasons as to how this isn't possible - time-turners can only go backwards - and he wonders for the first time if this isn't all just some terrible dream; Harry will wake up, and Hermione will be arguing with Ron about his recklessness again, and Ginny will be humming softly to herself, running her fingers through his hair as she wishes him good morning -

But that brief fantasy is ended abruptly with Tom Riddle's hand on his cheek, touching him - as though he were a lover, rather than Harry's most hated enemy. Harry is so shocked by the man's audacity that he does nothing to stop it, his mouth hanging open stupidly. He feels as though he's been transported to an alternate world, one where absolutely nothing makes sense. The Dark Lord's hands are exploring his face with a rapture that frightens Harry, fingers running over his eyelids and his brows and lingering uncomfortably on his lips, threading through his hair - like Ginny does, except harsher.

"I've missed you, Harry," Tom murmurs, resting his forehead against Harry's, who is by now convinced he has fallen unconscious and is having a very disturbing dream. "You've no idea how much."

"What are you doing?" Harry whispers, his body tense. He doesn't understand what it is Voldemort is after, and he wants badly to jerk away - but something tells him that such an action would be unwise. "What do you want?"

Why did you save me?

The question gives him pause. Now that he thinks about it, Harry realizes with a start that the person before him cannot possibly be the Voldemort he knows, or even Tom Riddle; Voldemort would not kill his own Death Eaters, or incapacitate his most trusted servant - not when they were so close to capturing The Boy Who Lived.

"That's right," Riddle mutters, seemingly to himself. "You don't...You don't know me yet. But you will," he says hurriedly, grabbing Harry's shoulder. "You will, I'll make sure of it. And this time," his voice quivers, "this time things will be different, I promise."

There is desperation in Riddle's voice; Harry is sure it shares an intimate connection with the fragility - bordering on madness - in this Riddle' s eyes. The other's hand is trembling violently where it rests on his cheek; he thinks there might be blood dried black to the skin there.

"London," Riddle says suddenly. "July 3rd of 1939. Go to Hyde Park, on Westminster. I'll be there, by the fountain. I'll be waiting for you."

He raises the stained hand to the time-turner, but he doesn't turn it; instead it comes to life immediately at his touch, and the air fills with the presence of strange magic - old magic.

It glows brightly, enough that Harry has to close his eyes, just as the world around him becomes distorted and his body grows disconcertingly light. He wants to cry out, to shove Riddle away, but any protests are silenced as a soft mouth covers his own. Harry freezes, disbelieving; a warm tongue explores his mouth now, and he tastes a strange variant of Coca-Cola, of all things.

It takes Harry a moment to realize he is tasting this because he's kissing back, and the situation is so wrong but it feels natural, too, like he's done this before, like he's supposed to -

The kiss turns bruising, then, and when Tom finally pulls away, crushing Harry to his chest, Harry is left gasping for breath. He allows the other to hold him, the blazing time-turner trapped between their bodies, and is wondering what is wrong with him when Tom buries his face in the crook of Harry's neck, rambling.

"I love you, I love you," he whispers, and Harry almost has a heart attack. "I'm sorry, love, I promise, you'll be safe this time, you'll be safe..."

Tom Riddle leans back and presses his forehead again to an utterly baffled Harry Potter. "Just stay with me." he pleads, looking him in the eyes.

"...Okay," Harry answers, and it is as though someone else says the words. He is dimly aware of magic flaring in the air, and something warm fills his body, thrumming in his chest and pulsing through his scar, wrapping around his being like a chain. Riddle looks relieved - triumphant - and some of his distress appears to ebb.

"Don't leave," he whispers, and there is a curious weight behind those words. "Never leave me, Harry, and you'll be safe."

The light from the time-turner becomes blinding, then. Harry turns away, witnessing from the corner of a squinting eye as Riddle fades, the hands disappearing from his face and arm and the sorrowful gray eyes shimmering like water before vanishing. The loss that floods him at the sight is inexplicable and entirely distressing, but he hardly has time to be worried before he experiences the extremely uncomfortable sensation of being ripped from space.

Wonderful, he thinks dryly, and the world blurs into nothing as Harry Potter is sent hurtling once again through time.

First posted Harry Potter fic - hope you liked!